Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Even before I’d opened my eyes, I knew it was a mistake.
Pale gray light streamed through the truck window, the soft, deep sound of Micah breathing beside me. I was pressed against him, clinging to his warmth beneath the sleeping bag, with Smoke stretched out on the other side of me with one leg kicked across my body.
I’d fallen asleep in the haze of the dwindling high, listening to the vibration of the rain on the roof of the truck. I could still smell Micah’s scent on me, feel him between my legs. And I didn’t want to move for fear that the spell would be broken.
I gently shifted onto my back, letting a hand fall into Smoke’s fur, and I let my gaze follow the curve of Micah’s freckled shoulder to the line of his neck and blond stubble on his jaw. He was still deep beneath the surface of sleep when I slipped my arm around him and pressed my face into the soft skin of his back. The smell of him was still the same. The eyes and the voice. But he was different now. We both were.
The flicker of movement outside made my eyes lift to the window. The condensation on the glass blurred the shape of whatever was there, but the low-hanging branches of the white fir at the trailhead were rocking with the weight of it.
I sat up slowly, the cold air kissing my skin as I reached over Micah and wiped at the moisture fogging the window. I exhaled heavily when my eyes focused on what was there.
Two wide black eyes stared back at me as the fluttering wings of an owl tipped and swayed, trying to balance on the branch. A shower of rainwater shook from the needles as the bird settled, the white specks of its body curving around its shape. When my eyes traveled down to the twisted lump that was one of its feet, my lips parted. The gnarled bones and upturned talons were the same as the owl I’d seen in Johnny’s photographs. The same one I’d seen documented in his field notes.
It was Subject 44. Johnny’s owl.
I leaned forward and its head careened toward the truck, like he was trying to see me, too. Frantically, I reached into the front seat for my bag and unzipped it. My hand found the folder inside and the pen that was clipped onto it. I tucked my legs beneath me, trying not to make any sudden movements, and when I took the pen into my fingers, a desperate, urgent rush flooded through me.
The owl’s glassy eyes met mine and the pen touched down, arcing over the thick paper of the folder in a sweep of motion that happened more by instinct than intent. I knew this feeling, the mind-clearing connection between my eyes and my hand. I hadn’t felt it in years.
The heart-shaped face of the owl came together, its liquid eyes catching the rising light as I drew. My hand brushed over the folder quickly in a movement that smeared the ink, but I didn’t care. The urgency had gripped me, taking me by the throat, and I could feel it the moment the bird tipped forward, shifting its weight to take off. I had seconds. Less than that.
The lines became more fluid as my hand jerked over the paper, and just as I finished the tangled contour of the foot, the owl’s wings unfurled, catching the air. I froze, watching its feathers stretch wide, and before I’d even let the breath in my chest go, it was gone.
I blinked, dropping my gaze down to the folder in my lap, where the pen was still pressed heavily to the surface. The ink was gathering there in a shining pool.
Micah shifted beside me, dragging my mind from that bright light and back into the shadows of the truck. But that seemed just as impossible. When I looked down, he was watching me. He propped himself up on his elbow, the warmth of him filling the space again as his eyes dropped to the folder.
His mussed hair fell into his face as he sat up and he pushed it back, attempting to tuck it behind one ear. He reached toward me, setting a hand on my wrist and moving my arms so he could see.
The owl was hidden there in the blur of lines, but I could make it out. Its form had just been beginning to take shape, its eyes like two empty puddles. But Micah’s face didn’t betray what he was thinking as he looked at it. His gaze just moved over the page slowly.
“What?” My hand fidgeted nervously with the pen.
“Nothing.”
“What?” I pressed, heart sinking.
“I just haven’t seen you draw in a long time,” he said, his voice so deep with the morning cold that it made me shiver.
His focus moved from the drawing to the pen in my hand, and he reached out, taking hold of my wrist and turning it over so that the scar was visible between us. The pale, rope-like mark had faded over the years, but it was still raised on the skin. Micah had been standing only feet away when I dragged the broken glass over my arm, and I could still remember that look of horror on his face.
Now his eyes traveled up from the scar to his soft, thin cotton T-shirt I was wearing. I’d pulled it on last night before we’d climbed into the truck and now I was drowning in it, the fabric clinging to my naked body underneath. His gaze lingered on the shape of my breasts, and I could see that it was sinking in for him, the memory of what happened last night. His hands touching my bare skin. The broken sound that had escaped my lips.
He let me go and sat all the way up, sending his gaze past me, toward the window. “Last night…”
“Was a mistake.” I said it before he could. At least one of us had to have the guts to admit it, and this way, we shared the burden.
He let out a long breath. “I don’t know what it was.”
That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. He ran both hands through his hair again, taking the sweatshirt from the front seat, and I tried not to watch the muscles move beneath his skin as he pulled it over his head. I didn’t know how I was going to put that part of me back to sleep.
“We should head back,” he said.
I nodded, trying not to show that it hurt when he wouldn’t look at me. I could feel him putting more than just physical distance between us. He was shutting down, the Micah from last night disappearing before my very eyes.
He opened the back of the truck and Smoke jumped out. Micah tugged on his jeans and boots, and by the time I was untangled from the sleeping bag and dressed, Micah had his keys in hand. He got into the driver’s seat without a word and started the truck.
I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. That we’d done something that couldn’t easily be undone. We’d crossed thresholds like that in the past, and we’d be paying the consequences for the rest of our lives. I’d known that leaving Six Rivers would be hard. That’s why I hadn’t told him when I was accepted to Byron. But what I hadn’t known—what I’d underestimated to my core—was how hard it would be to stay away.
Micah had the engine running when I opened the door and let Smoke jump back in. Then I climbed into the front seat, buckling my seatbelt as he put the truck in reverse.
“Thank you for bringing me out here,” I said.
He turned toward me, waiting to take his foot off the brake. “All you had to do was ask.”
That was truer than maybe I even knew. Micah had been offering to help me, trying to get me to open up about what I was doing here, since I arrived. But I’d shut him out. Mostly because I was afraid of what opening the door between us would do. Last night had been a perfect example of that.
“Micah?” I breathed, staring out the windshield.
“What?”
“I don’t think it was an accident,” I whispered.
He went still before he shifted the gear back into park. “What? Johnny?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know. I have these flashes, like remnants of what happened, and I just feel like he wasn’t alone out here that day. That he was scared.”
His voice lowered. “That’s why you wanted to come out here?”
I nodded.
Micah let his hand fall from the steering wheel. I could see him considering it, his mind racing with the thought.
“Is there anything you can think of that was going on before he died? Anything that could have gotten him killed?”
Micah went stiff, as if the idea made him tense up all over. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Was he involved with anyone?”
Micah didn’t react, but I thought I could see just the slightest ripple of something beneath his calm expression. “Why are you asking that?” He sounded almost a little defensive.
“I’m just trying to put together what was going on up here.”
“Did someone say something to you?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. It was a strange thing to ask. “No. Should they have?”
Micah rubbed his face with both hands.
“What about Josie?” I pressed.
“The CAS girl?”
“Yeah.”
“I have no idea. I mean, maybe.”
“Do you know her?”
Micah shook his head. “No, not really. Met her once when she was here getting Johnny set up for the project.”
“Was she around in November?”
Micah licked his lips, frustrated now. “What are you getting at, James?”
“I don’t think he was really alone out here when it happened. Is it possible that Josie was in town?”
Micah considered it. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Would he have told you?”
Micah let out a heavy breath. “What does that mean?”
“Olivia said there was something going on between you two. She implied that you were fighting about something.”
“That’s just Olivia being Olivia. We were fine, okay?”
I waited, and when he didn’t say anything else, I gave in to the temptation to push even harder.
“Then why do I still feel like there’s something you’re not telling me?”
“Look, is it possible he had someone with him? Maybe. But there was no one here when we got here, and the truck was left behind. Where did they go? How did they get out of the gorge?”
“Maybe he met someone here.”
I reached for the bag at my feet, pulling out the folder with the prints. When I found the one I was looking for, I set it on the seat between us. It was the photograph of the pink backpack.
“This was taken out here just a couple of days before he died.”
He went still when he glanced down. I could see right away that he was tempering his reaction, reeling back the look on his face.
“What? What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said, but the word was only half formed, buried in thought.
“Do you recognize it?”
Micah tucked the photo in with the others. “This is from the gorge? You’re sure?”
“Yeah, it was on a roll of film from November tenth.” I studied him, asking the question again. “Whose is it?”
“Maybe he labeled it wrong. Or maybe you misread the numbers? The guy had shit handwriting.”
“Micah, whose backpack is it?”
He leaned back against the seat, eyes still on the photo. “It’s Autumn’s.”
“Autumn?” I struggled to place the name.
“A kid from the high school. Johnny was teaching her some photography stuff. Helped her get into Byron.”
My conversation with Olivia came back to me in broken fragments. She’d said that Johnny had mentored a student there.
“How do you know it’s hers?” I said.
“The drawings—she marked it up like that. She carried that backpack around everywhere.”
“So, what are you saying? That Johnny was out here with that girl?”
“I’m not saying anything.” He was definitely avoiding my gaze now. “I’m just telling you whose backpack it is.”
I shot a glance out the window, to the dense forest that surrounded us. Micah told me that when Johnny shot in the gorge, he always spent the night. And that’s what he’d done on November 9.
“Didn’t you say he spent the night out here that night? That he didn’t come back until the next day?”
“Sometimes he let her help out on his shoots,” he thought aloud.
“But she’s like, what? Eighteen?”
Micah didn’t answer, but I was still confused. “I thought Olivia said she was away at school.”
“She is. She left back in the fall.”
“But he wouldn’t have done that, right? Spent the night all the way out here in the middle of nowhere with a teenager?” I asked.
“No,” he said, dismissively. “No way.”
“Then how do you explain this?”
He sighed, agitated now. “I don’t know, James. I don’t know anything.”
The number of things that didn’t add up here were multiplying by the second. If Johnny was out here on a shoot on November 10, how and why had that girl been with him? And did that mean that she was here when he returned a couple of days later? I didn’t like how that looked. How it felt.
I slipped the photo back into the folder, letting it rest in my lap. The idea was still pricking my thoughts. None of this was sitting well with me.
My hands curled around the folder in my lap and the eyes of the owl in the drawing bored into me, two ink-black pools that made me shiver. There were so many ways that Johnny and I were the same, and this was one of them. Both of us had always been trying to capture moments and keep them. Him with the camera, me with my pen. But in the end, we somehow always saw things differently.